Unpredictable
by Lazy Tortoise
Summary: Peter has never really considered the implications of his powers, and Sylar wants to stay alive long enough to enjoy his.


A/N: Because at this point in canon, Peter and Sylar can do _anything, _and that is very, very awesome. Slight slash, but no more than on the show. Sylar's always been a fantastically creepy metaphor, anyway. Constructive criticism is more than welcome.

Not mine, Universal Studios'.

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><p><strong>Unpredictable<strong>

"Go on, take it."

Sylar's hand was outstretched, palm upwards, and despite the generosity of his offer, Peter still hesitated.

"_Take it,_" Sylar repeated, snarling this time. Impatient. His mouth was curled in a contemptuous grimace, his eyes were anxious, and Peter wondered which parts of his body language were lying. Sylar had always defied predictability, and in a world that continuously see-sawed between a dozen different types of armageddon, timelines all a-jumble, that meant something.

"Why?" he asked. "Why shouldn't I just kill you now?"

Sylar grinned. "Melodramatic as always." He stalked across the room, and arranged himself in one of Peter's kitchen chairs. That was really the only word for it - the way he tucked in his legs and arms, meticulous and precise and oh-so _entitled. _

Peter's hands curled into fists. "Give me one good reason not to."

"You could try to kill me, I suppose." Sylar reached up to pick Peter's clock from the wall, and examined the back of it with a bored expression. He held a finger above the back hatch, and moved it in minuscule circles. The screws came loose in his hand as the watch fell open to his scrutiny. He poked at it, looking thoroughly disgusted. "Wires, Peter," he said. "This is _electric._"

Annoyed, Peter leaned over and snatched it out of his grasp. His fingers were wrapped around Sylar's throat before he realized what was doing. He could feel his muscles twitch, remembering a dozen martial arts grips that could snap Sylar's neck easy as breathing. Muscle memory. Sometimes he wondered whether he called up the abilities by remembering the individuals, or if he could only remember the individuals with such clarity because of their abilities. _Monica. Just a kid, really. Did flips and grandstands down the hallway of the company just because she could. _Once he'd put a face to the flood of information, it wasn't so bad. He could control it. Instead of taking Sylar's head off, he called up fire to his hand. Sylar groaned and twisted as his skin blistered and began to char. He set his jaw, and suddenly burning Sylar's neck was like trying to heat the ocean with a warm water bottle. His skin was beyond cold, blue and brittle as ice.

"Try it," Sylar hissed. "You're the only one who can even touch me anymore. Don't you want to be invincible? If I die, no one will measure up to you. You could do _anything."_ His eyes locked on to Peter's, brown enough to look black without emotion to lend them spark. "I could destroy the planet. It wouldn't even be hard. Do you ever think about that? Pushing the ecosystem beyond what it can take, and doing it again, and again, and again, until nothing can ever evolve to challenge you."

Peter gasped as Sylar took a step forwards, melting through him as if her were made of mist. It was like a breath of warm air, and startlingly invasive. The other man paceed to the window, then turned around, the moonlight illuminating him like a halo. The image was profoundly wrong.

"I wouldn't do that, of course," Sylar continued, unaffected. "But I could. If earth was destroyed, I'd float forever amongst the stars. We'll never die, Peter. You think centuries are a long time? In five billion years, the sun is going to flicker out, and we'll need a contingency plan."

Peter laughed, because the thought of outliving the solar system was insane enough to be both terrifying and hilarious. "I don't plan on either of us living until then," he confessed. "Why are you offering me your abilities? You know I'll use them to hunt you down."

Sylar shrugged. "I might get bored in a few millennia."

"I'm stronger than you," Peter pressed.

Sylar actually chuckled, and visions of himself spinning like a top and then kicking Sylar through the windowpane hummed through Peter's mind and muscles.

"You have more _abilities,"_ Sylar corrected. "For now. One day, you're going to let me take the top of your head off and have a look. It would be _fascinating,_" he sighed and gave Peter's scalp an enraptured look. "You're not stronger than me, because you are not willing to do whatever is necessary. Destiny chose me as her tool." He shrugs. "I've been thinking about it. You have a role in this as well. We all play our parts. You're the grindstone, Peter. You - focus me, sharpen me. Keep me vigilant."

Peter couldn't help himself. He laughed. The surreal quality of having the most dangerous man in the world wake him up at three in the morning to lecture him about destiny was taking its toll. "You're fucking insane," he told the other man. "Get the hell out of my room, or try to kill me already."

Sylar nodded, approvingly. "That's better. Still melodramatic, but less predictable."

Peter ran a hand through his hair. Sylar was glowing in the moonlight, practically jittering with - well, something. Excitement, insanity, bloodlust. "I'm going back to bed," Peter informed him. "There's leftovers in the fridge, if you're hungry. Be gone when I wake up." He turned around, ignoring the phantom burning sensation between his shoulder blades that came from turning his back to a mass murderer. The room was quiet for a moment, and he could make out Sylar's shadow on the floorboards, reaching out before him. Marking Sylar's position.

Peter whirled before he'd even finished the thought. The batteries from the eviscerated clock hurled through the air like bullets. One smashed through Sylar's chest, the momentum of it lodging it deep in the back of his ribcage as the bones cracked under the pressure. Blood sprayed across the floor as Sylar's heart continued to frantically beat. Peter's white t-shirt and pajama bottoms were speckled with droplets of red, and he felt suddenly, desperately unclean.

The second battery hovered before Sylar's forehead like a third eye.

"Oh, Peter," he sighed, like he was disappointed. Like Peter had broken his favorite teacup, not his aorta, and he wasn't standing in a growing pool of his own blood. Then the battery emerged from Sylar's chest with a wet 'pop', and the impromptu missiles came hurtling back at Peter. He instinctively held out a hand to stop them in their path, but caught only one. Sylar changed the trajectory of the second one at the last minute, hovering it over Peter's head. Peter lifted his second hand, and tried to wrest the battery from Sylar's grasp. Sylar's will was as unbendable as his own, and he mentally hacked and slashed at the tendrils of power the other man was exuding to keep the object in place. He almost got it - he could feel the shape of the metal slowly revolving, obeying him as it twisted towards Sylar. Then it changed in his grasp, and he lost it. The shape shifted as Sylar melted the battery above him, and molten slag rained down over Peter. He could feel the liquid metal burning holes through his skin, the most painful way he'd died so far, and he screamed and screamed until his voice was gone and the world went black.

When he came to, there were little droplets of silver on the pillow next to his head. Beyond that, there was a bowl with a bloody pair of pincers in it. Peter blinked, and waited for the disorientation that always accompanied coming back from the dead to clear. He was lying on the floor in his apartment. Someone had given him a pillow. The mist was lifting a little, and he focused on the bowl. It was - floating.

And suddenly, there was Sylar.

Inches away from him, lying on his side between Peter and the bowl. His eyes were half closed, and he gave him a lazy, predatory smile.

"Hey, you," he said.

"Holy _shit,_" Peter choked out, and he scrabbled to get away from the mass murderer that just appeared out of bramblefuck nowhere. "What the _hell?" _

Sylar was laughing again, and the silver drops lifted from the floor to orbit him like a miniature solar system. "Invisibility," he chirped. "I just took the one. I've saved the rest for later." It sounded like a promise, the way he said it. His voice dropped, abruptly serious. "I want you to give them to me. When I've conquered everything else, I want your intuitive empathy. But not until then. Empathy before its proper time would ruin everything."

Peter reached for his forehead, even though he knew that by now, the cut had healed.

"Why?" he repeated, because nothing made sense anymore. Sylar'd had him at his mercy, and didn't kill him. He was half tempted to check if gravity was still functioning, until he remembered that gravity'd been broken for a long time. It had been the first casualty of his manifesting abilities. If physics couldn't stand against him, what chance did sanity have?

Sylar sat up, and reached beneath his coat, which was lying in a unceremonious pile beside him, to pull out a carton of chinese takeout.

"Regeneration makes me hungry," he explained. "I brought you spring rolls. Everybody likes spring rolls, right?" He peeled open the greasy carton, which Peter recognized as coming from a 24-hour restaurant on the neighboring block, and fished two pairs of chopsticks out of his pocket. Peter numbly accepted one of them.

"If you try to stab me with those, I'll burn your apartment down," Sylar warned. Peter didn't reply. He hadn't realized how ravenous he was until now, and the spicy smell of the food was making his mouth water. Resigned, he dug in. Food. Food was a constant. Even served on floorboards stained with his own blood and eaten in company with his murderer. He wondered how long time he'd been dead. Long enough for Sylar to pick up noodles, apparently.

"Your plan is to drive me mad," Peter guessed."You're going to show up at random intervals, spout nonsense, and then disappear. Over and over. Until I crack. Like some sick form of chinese water torture."

Sylar thoughtfully tapped his lower lip with a chopstick. "Not my plan for tonight. That's an interesting idea, though. Do you think it would work on Claire?"

"Stay away from Claire." At this point, the phrase was practically a reflex.

"Relax. She's immortal." Sylar snagged the last piece of chicken, and proceeded to talk through a mouthful of food. "Actually I came here because you, for some reason, are unable to kill people to get what you want. You cannot accept collateral damage."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Peter said.

"That's ridiculous. It's just your fundamental nature. I might as well compliment you on having legs." Sylar rapped the floor with a chopstick for attention. "No. The problem is, for some reason, that nature lapses around _me. _You have no compunctions about, for example, ramming a battery through my chest."

"You killed me!" Peter sputtered. "You tried to kill _everyone. _You cut open innocent people's heads for your own perverted pleasure!"

Sylar handwaved him. "That's _my_ fundamental nature. I'm just preoccupied you might get carried away. Like I said, you're the only one who can touch me anymore."

Peter leaned in a little. It was oddly gratifying that Sylar, the boogeyman, humanity's collective worst nightmare, was preoccupied. About him. "You shouldn't have come here," he said. "Break into my head again, and I will find you, and kill you. And stay away from Claire."

To his surprise, Sylar nodded. "You're right. I've only given you more motivation to kill me by coming here tonight. I shouldn't have taken invisibility. Perhaps you'd accept one of my abilities in return, and we can forget about tonight?"

"I probably already have your abilities. What's the catch?"

"You're not accepting them. You need to think about me for them to kick in. How I make you _feel._"

"Nauseous?" Peter suggested. "Repulsed? Angry? Why would I want to think about that?"

Sylar was watching him intensely. "Just do it, and I'll leave. If it was something you couldn't control, you'd have noticed already. Like with Sprague. It's a gift, Peter. It's destiny."

Sighing, Peter held out his hand before him, palm upwards, mirroring Sylar's earlier gesture, and thought of the fundamental uneasiness he always felt around the other man. They were never more than seconds away from violence. Sylar was like a tightly wound coil, and Peter had no idea what set him off. A time bomb. Something mechanical and inhuman. Peter felt the slow heat of new abilities in the back of his mind, and the world slipped simultaneously in and out of focus. Sylar placed his hand flat against Peter's and there was the faint orange glow of transferring power. Peter had seen it many times before, but never like this, never really understanding how and why this came to be, the intent of it all. It was beautiful. It was horrendous.

He looked around his apartment like a blind man seeing for the first time. Everything was in shades of transparent. He could see the mechanics governing the space he'd taken for granted. From the simple hinges of his cupboards - and the one farthest to the left, the one with canned soup and chocolate chip cookies, the door was 3 degrees crooked - to the innards of his refrigerator, and he knew that if he had to, he could tear it down and rebuild it. Tear it down and examine the parts, how intricate they were, the way they fit together effortlessly. And it didn't stop at mechanics. He looked at the potted basil by the sink, and there was biology, chemistry. The plant wasn't just green, there was the photosynthesis in the leaves in the cells in the chloroplasts.

"It's wonderful," he sighed. He was alone in a world of detail.

Then Sylar slipped a finger under his chin, and tilted his face towards his. "Look at me," he commanded.

Peter couldn't have closed his eyes even if he wanted to. Despite whatever moral reservations Peter might have had about him, Sylar was biologically human, and by far the most complex thing in the room. As a nurse, Peter knew a good deal about the human body. He'd seen the innards of more people than he could count on both hands, most of them since his powers manifested, and he could rattle off the names of the 206 bones in the body, something Nathan had been willing to bet a case of beer he couldn't learn in a week. Sylar's body didn't look anything like the corpses, or the textbooks. It wasn't messy and broken. It wasn't 2D, simplified to fit on a piece of paper. His bronchioles filled his lungs, branching out like coral, and electric impulses zipped along his nerves. The organs were familiar, and Peter counted them out. Heart, liver, stomach, pancreas, kidneys-

"Like a watch," Sylar said. "Take out a cog, and the whole thing grinds to a halt. It can be a bit overwhelming at first."

"I can see your lymph nodes," Peter breathed. "They're glowing."

"Try the hypothalamus."

Peter redirected his gaze at Sylar's head. Immediately, he was caught up in the thousands of photoreceptors that made up his pupils.

"The _brain," _said Sylar.

Peter pushed a little, and then he was inside. All it took was a quick look. He wanted to disassemble Sylar like the refrigerator and see how he thought. The anatomy of insanity. Peter had always been too curious. He wasn't aware of the finger he had pressed against Sylar's temple before the other pushed it away.

"Not like that," Sylar hissed, and broke Peter's finger with a quick snap of his own.

The pain brought Peter back to himself enough that he yelped, and withdrew his hand. Sylar had him pinned to the floor, and he was looking at him like he could swallow him with his eyes. Then Peter was back in Sylar's brain, more cognizant this time, and the intuitive empathy welled up in him unbidden. And it just - clicked.

He understood.

Everything.

The sting of moments that made up Sylar's life was laid out before him, dim and tarnished. It was not a pretty life, and he sorted through it with distaste. Murder. Abuse. Loneliness. More murder. Then, as the memories began to clear, he found himself feeling alongside Sylar - Gabriel - watching as things spiraled in and out of control. He broke his first watch, and, unwilling to tell his father what had happened, fixed his first watch after two months of intense study in the watch's anatomy. His bird died. His father died. Everyone died. He met Chandra, whicht was a little like waking up and discovering that the winter had passed overnight. He killed people for the fix of knowledge, the hum of newly acquired power before his body got used to it. He did laundry and cooked dinner. He went on a road trip with Mohinder, which was a kaleidoscope of thrill/longing/greed/guilt/deception and the most fun he'd had in years. He grew into who he was now before Peter's eyes.

Peter inhaled, and Sylar's dreams came to him in the wake of his breath. Nothing was really permanent for them, anymore. They were caught in an infinite game of cat and mouse. Sylar had a vision of the two of them, linked by their hands and several billion years of shared history, floating infinitely amongst the stars, both gloriously mad. They could rule like kings, but that would get old, and wouldn't be a challenge. There were no more limits. They were on a dusty floor in a crummy apartment, and Sylar had some sweet-sour sauce in the corner of his mouth, and it made Peter want to laugh because it was gloriously mundane. They could have done anything, and this was what they had chosen. The only part of them that had remained ordinary was their imagination, and that was all that set the boundaries anymore. Peter was possessed with the urge to spend the next centuries simply thinking, just to see if he could come up with a project worth completing.

"That's enough," Sylar said, and he withdrew.

Peter almost whimpered at the loss of contact. Sylar's mind was amazing.

Then reality hit home, and he was instantly, violently nauseous.

Sylar got to his feet (barefoot? Since when was he barefoot?) and silently padded over to his coat, which was still in a crumpled heap. He bent, and gathered it into his arms, deliberately avoiding Peter's gaze.

"I didn't feel... human." Peter muttered. Sylar pulled his heavy black coat on over his t-shirt, and Peter wondered if he'd taken it off after picking up takeout. It must have been while he was dead, before Sylar picked out the bits of battery.

"How can you be sure that's what we are? We don't have the same genes. We aren't mortal. We're something completely new." Sylar addressed the potted basil.

_That's not helping!_ a voice in Peter's head screamed. "Is this how you feel? Every day?" He was proud that his voice sounded reasonably stable despite the way the rest of his body was shaking.

Sylar frowned, finally facing Peter, arms crossed across his chest. "I manage to forget about it, most of the time. Try keeping busy."

That might just have been the most inadequate piece of advice he'd ever been given, Peter decided, and that included the gems Nathan had doled out about how ignoring the ability to screw Newton's theories three ways to Sunday would magically make things better. Thinking about Nathan made the shaking abate a little, and he managed to sit up straight.

"We still feel. Love. Hurt. We're still humans," he informed Sylar.

"If you cut us, do we not bleed?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Hang on to that idealism. You're going to need it when everyone you love are footnotes in history books." Sylar examined his nails. "I thought you'd have picked up on the trend by now. Simone. Caitlin. Maybe I've overestimated you."

In all the confusion, Peter had forgotten how willfully cruel Sylar could be.

"Get out of my apartment," he snapped.

"Glad to," Sylar walked to the window and thew it open. Peter assumed it was habit more than anything, since he could easily pass through it if he wanted to. Glimpses of Sylar's gift still flickered in Peter's sight, and he could see the strain in the other man's posture, the way his shoulders and back were rigid as a board. Disappointment, and resignation.

"Wait," Peter choked out.

Sylar turned, and raised an eyebrow.

"That - thing you saw. Us. And the stars."

"I'm counting on you kill me when that day comes," Sylar said. "Can you imagine the boredom?"

Peter nodded. He'd want Sylar to return the favor, after all. "What now?" he asked.

That earned him a broad grin. "I understand how things work. You understand how people work. Together, we understand everything. How do you feel about ruling the world?"

"Don't you think that's a little cliché, considering the infinite options?"

"I was never one for joint custody, anyway," Sylar said. "I don't like sharing my toys." He clambered onto the windowsill, his string bean limbs disappearing into the wall, as he was far too big for the small opening. It was a bizarre sight, but then, Peter thought, that was Sylar. He wondered if Sylar was unpredictable to preemptively stave off the monotony of living forever. Once he was as old as Adam, patterns would emerge. He was going to need someone who could break them. Peter was instantly horrified with himself for that thought.

"Goodbye, Peter," said Sylar. "Don't be a stranger."

He was gone, and a cold wind wafted in the open window. Peter closed it distractedly with telekinesis, and tossed out the empty carton of chinese food. Then he - manually, he needed to use his hands - filled the water boiler, and poured coffee crystals in a mug. He wanted to something drink, and booze didn't seem like a smart choice at the moment. He sat down at his small kitchen table, and hid his head in his hands. His first thought was; _this is stupid, I could heat the water without wasting electricity, _and he resented it. So much of what he did was ingrained habits. He simply hadn't changed his life to match his abilities. Mostly because he didn't consider it, but partly because it calmed him. It made him feel normal. He couldn't spend every minute of every day thinking about how he could survive parachute-less parachuting if he wanted to.

Sylar seemed to have accepted that part of himself. Perhaps that was one of the reasons he wanted Peter to have his gift.

The boiler pinged, and Peter absentmindedly added sugar to his coffee. He was out of clean spoons, so he stirred it with his finger, watching the heat raise blisters that disappeared almost as soon as they popped up. The he settled by the window, mug cupped in both hands. He was still trembling faintly. Sylar wanted to live forever, or at least as long as it amused him. What he did - what he'd done - was all means to that end. Peter couldn't share that desire. He didn't want to die right that instant, but he'd definitely been planning on getting around to it someday. It was just something you did. He'd seen people die, and it didn't have to be ugly, or painful. There was a certain grace to inevitability. But just because he didn't share Sylar's sentiment didn't mean he didn't understand him.

It stung a little, to know that the other man had read him so perfectly. Peter had refused to see Sylar as a human. He was a monster, an abomination. A rabid dog for Peter to put down so it didn't harm anyone. In giving Peter the keys to his head, he'd exposed himself. All the ugly moments that had twisted him. The failures, and the tiny redemptions. He'd laid himself completely bare, and in surrendering, he'd won. Peter couldn't kill him. Wouldn't be able to see him for anything but exactly what he was ever again. And yes, he was a monster, but he'd had a bird once, and he'd cared for it, and it died, and how could Peter just forget what it had been like to be that devastated boy?

Sylar would live as long as he pleased, because he'd broken Peter. And one day, when the loneliness was too much for them both, Peter would find him, and give him his empathy, and that would break Sylar right back. Peter despised himself for it, but destiny was what it was because there was simply no other way things could play out. You couldn't understand someone completely without loving them for it.


End file.
